by Open Europe blog team
Responses to the extraordinary results of the Italian elections have started to come in from around the rest of Europe, the most interesting of which we include below. Predictably, an instant raft of warnings has come out from Northern Europe and Brussels.

from euro|topics
The political stalemate after the election in Italy caused turmoil on the markets on Tuesday. The yields on Italian government bonds rose while share prices fell in several countries and the euro also dropped significantly in value. Some commentators warn that the EU is now paying the price of its austerity policy and that the euro crisis will worsen once again. Others believe that the Eurozone is now in a position to survive Italy’s political paralysis.

from open Democracy News Analysis – by Nigel Warner
Media is evolving and converging. Regulation should be simple, cohesive, and it must protect the rich diversity of voices and mediums currently enjoyed. It is economic rather than regulatory dangers that pose the greatest threats to media survival.

from open Democracy News Analysis – by Ben Worthy
With increased use of outsourcing, particularly in the NHS, campaigners want to bring private contractors under FoI legislation. At the same time the government is considering restricting access to information due to alleged abuse. Which direction should FoI be travelling?

by EU-Digest
The return of Silvio Berlusconi to the Italian political stage sends an unmistakable message to Europe?s leaders: They will have to be a lot more ambitious if they want to hold their currency union together.

from A Fistful Of Euros » A Fistful Of Euros by Brent Whelan
The Italian voters have spoken?but what on earth did they say?
Two clear winners were anointed yesterday. First, Beppe Grillo, whose M5S placed first at 25% with the slogan ?send them home,? retire all the old guard politicians and replace them with citizen-legislators. And second, Silvio Berlusconi, the oldest of the old guard, the embodiment of everything Grillo and his followers railed against. So having yoked together this improbable pair, can the Italian voters honestly expect the state to move forward in any direction whatsoever?

from open Democracy News Analysis – by Francesca E.S. Montemaggi
The Italian election resulted in a deadlock with no clear winner. But while Italy is stuck between politics as usual and a sterile protest vote, the seeds of a ?liberal revolution? have discretely been sown. Could this mark the beginning of an Italian spring?

by EU-Digest
The results, notably by the dramatic surge of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement of comic Beppe Grillo, left the center-left bloc with a majority in the lower house but without the numbers to control the powerful upper chamber, the Senate.

from Global Voices Online by Janet Gunter
This post is part of our Europe in Crisis special coverage.
Thousands of Portuguese people, unhappy with the austerity measures imposed by the government, have promised to again fill the streets of the country on March 2, 2013.

from Global Voices Online by Atlatszo.hu
Last week, Hungarian TV channel Atv reported [hu] that they had obtained a list created by the official student union at one of Hungary’s most renowned universities. Allegedly, the student union members at ELTE University?s Faculty of Humanities (BTK) added offensive comments to a list of applicants to the university’s freshmen camping trip, using personal information available on once the largest Hungarian social network iWiW. The leaked [hu] list was created in 2009.